Unit Browser for RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Short description

These very best soldiers of the Antigonid army fight in a Macedonian phalanx formation, and have no one to fear.

Description

The Peltasts were an elite regiment, recruited from the wealthy and well-educated parts of the Macedonian population. These phalangites represent a picked force selected from this larger regiment: the agema. Armed with the best equipment available, which they would decorate with the ancient insignia of the Kingdom of Macedon, these men are the best of the best of the best! Trained to fight in almost every way, they are your best unit on the battlefield.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the armies of Philip II and Alexander the Great, the elite infantry regiments were the Hypaspists and the Argyraspides. While the Argyraspides ended up in the East, in the ranks of the Seleucid army, "Hypaspist" became more of a title for high-ranking officers (as mentioned by Polybios in XVIII, 33, 2). For a long time, there was confusion among historians as to what the elite regiment of the Antigonid army would have been. In the 1950s respectively 1980s, however, two stones with inscriptions were unearthed in Greek Macedonia, with inscriptions describing the "Peltasts" of the 3rd century BC Macedonian army. The beginning of the first inscription, the so-called ‘Drama stone’, was restored by Pierre Juhel and Nick Sekunda to: "They shall enrol those well provided with property in the agema and the other peltastai [...]." This tells us that the Peltasts were an elite regiment, recruited from the wealthy and well-educated parts of the Macedonian population, and that there was an Agema regiment within them.

This corresponds to a formulation in Polybios (V, 25, 1), where Agema and Peltasts are equally mentioned together, and gave rise to the thought that this unit was named not after the traditional Pelta, the shield of the (originally) Thracian Peltasts, but after the Macedonian Pelta, the small shield of the Phalangites. It seems logical, then, that the Royal Peltasts, just like the Argyraspides in the Seleucid Empire, could fight both as Macedonian phalangites and as heavy infantry. In fact, Livy (XLII, 51, 4-5) states that:

"Out of the whole force of caetrati, 2,000 men in the prime of strength and manhood were selected to form a body known as the "agema", their commanders were Leonnatos and Thrasippos. Antiphilos of Edessa was in command of the rest of the caetrati, numbering about 3,000 men."

The Latin term caetrati is a direct translation of the Greek peltastai, as Livy states elsewhere (XXXI, 36, 1). Hence, we can conclude that the Royal Peltasts were the direct successors of the Hypaspists in Antigonid Macedon, that the whole regiment numbered 5,000 men, 2,000 of whom formed the Agema, and that they were recruited from the strongest and most able sons of the wealthier citizens of the land.

Armed with the best equipment available, which they would decorate with the ancient insignia of the Kingdom of Macedon, these men are the best of the best of the best. Perhaps only the Seleucid Argyraspides could match the Agema of the Peltasts in battle. In 270 BC, however, the kings Antigonos II Gonatas (320/319-239 BC) and Antiochos I Soter (324/323-261 BC) were allied through the marriage of Stratonike (ca. 320-254 BC), who was likely Antigonos’ sister (there is no place here to elaborate on the love drama involved: Stratonike had initially married Antiochos’ father Seleukos [358-281 BC], but her son-in-law fell in love with her), with Antiochos. Therefore, they never faced each other in battle. Nevertheless, the skills of the Agema of the Peltasts were probably equal to the Seleucid elite units, even though they lacked a reputation going back all the way to Alexander. The 2,000 men of the Agema were chosen from the most able sons of the most prominent families in the kingdom and thus also possessed social privileges. Trained to fight in almost every way, they are your best men on the battlefield.